Talk:Reviews
Player Character balance- Not all skills are created equal. Some are far outshined by other skills. There is pretty much no reason to invest in +% damage SP-using skills. Passive +damage skills have more of an contribution to the outcome of a battle, and stunning/support skills are more immediately useful for putting enemies down. Casimir- Drunk dart is very questionable. Doesn't buff or debuff strongly enough to use on either allies or enemies, ever. Poison dart doesn't deal enough damage for its SP cost. Both fall way behind slow and stasis dart. Oksana- Multiheal requires just too much SP to be worth using over normal healing, it's rare to build that much up, considering the pressure on Oksana is on to heal ALL the time in a hard fight. Celestial drive is a more justifiable expense, but still really pales next to just healing away. Oksana's healing and status removal are way more effective than casimir's, and she's tougher and hits harder too, so casimir sort of falls behind for skill points and general teammate usefulness. Hope he gets an upgrade in the sequel. I found it too easy to turn Teveron into the tank of the group, while leaving Vadim and Ivan relatively squishy. Not sure if this was intended, but Teveron quickly became unstoppable while Vadim and Ivan often suffered from ever-increasing enemy lethality. Also, Ysabel almost never got the chance to knife anyone (as the crossbow can be used in melee instead for the same damage without having to use AP moving), so her knife attack and "dirty knife" skill is utterly useless after the first episode. Also, Ivan's smoke attack, while useful, is too inaccurate to get much use out of without quicksave exploiting. *Enemy Balance- I found that enemies were extremely difficult to corner or to present a united front to, due to the very open layout of most levels. Archers tended to shoot clean over cover and other people, which while entirely realistic, is frustrating when Ysabel and Casimir are easily blocked off by even a single person's body, so return fire is impossible. Constantly escalating enemy damage made any allied character without a lot of defensive investments very easy to kill. I found all these things limited tactical options considerably, which is very unfortunate. *SP and gold economy- World's End suffers from the common "unstable equilibrium" syndrome, where performing well early on makes everything way too easy, while not doing well early on makes everything so much harder. And any misplaced investments are a major, permanent penalty, since SP and gold are in short supply. I'd suggest either implementing a skills reset function and selling equipment back at 100%, as mentioned in an earlier, and maybe the ability to replay earlier battles to get the max SP/gold out of them, or make more optional battles available for grinding purposes. *Secrets- while the secrets are nice, they are fairly powerful rewards for obscure things. Most of them were nearly impossible to luck onto or spot quickly, and due to the mechanics, it's not easy to explore the environment, even with only one enemy left alive. Make the secrets more obvious or less rewarding, or just take them out. *Rest of the gameplay- Loved it. Keep the basic combat mechanics as is. I had to dig deep into the big ol' art of war and use decoys, flanking, chokepoints, high ground, crowd control and other miscellaneous tricks, which is the sign of a well-thought-out game. It's hard, which is not everyone's cup of tea, but it's very satisfying once you get over the learning curve. I would recommend the game giving a tip or two if you are defeated, though, or maybe just put in adjustable difficulty settings at the start. *Production values- a strong point, at least to me. Loved the writing, especially anything that came out of Teveron. Setting and aesthetics are a refreshing change of pace from typical fantasy. Music is good, especially the church tracks. Although the redshield buzzing eventually became annoying since those battles took so long. Overall, I really really liked this game, and I really look forward to seeing what you come up with next, Mezzanine.